Anjou
Released
Anjou’s album was the first full-length collaboration between Mark Nelson and Robert Donne, both ex-members of Labradford, since the latter group’s final album in 2001. Wisely, they haven’t ‘picked up’ where their former outfit left off, even if both groups may share a particular tonality – one of quiet, refined melancholy; heavy but not ponderous, considered but not pretentious. Donne and Nelson tend to slowly unravel long threads of electronics, some escaping like gas, others caked in grit and mud; drummer Steven Hess builds rhythmic scaffolds over these textural explorations, which is an interesting inversion of the usual. It’s resigned, reserved, but neither icy nor inhuman.